PLEASE NOTE: In the autumn of 1995, we hatched the idea for a free, local gardening publication. The following spring, we published the first issue of Michigan Gardener magazine. Advertisers, readers, and distribution sites embraced our vision. Thus began an exciting journey of helping our local gardening community grow and prosper.
After 27 years, nearly 200 issues published, and millions of copies printed, we have decided it is time to end the publication of our Print Magazine and E-Newsletter.

Archive for the agriculture tag

Vacant Detroit buildings breed indoor farms

August 16, 2016 • Leave a Comment

The Detroit News:

Entrepreneurs are taking advantage of inexpensive former warehouses and factories in Detroit and transforming them for agricultural use to produce local foods.

There’s a growing movement of using vacant buildings and spaces to produce lettuce, basil and kale, and even experiment with fish farming — year-round.

And the city is considering regulations that could expand indoor agriculture even more.

“Fifteen, 20 years from now, we want people to say, ‘Of course they grow kale in that building,’ ” said Ron Reynolds, co-founder of Green Collar Foods Ltd. It built its first indoor-farming research hub in Eastern Market’s Shed 5 in 2015.

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State house considers right to farm bill

January 30, 2015 • Leave a Comment

MI Food News:

Representative Tim Kelly (R-Saginaw Twp) has introduced House Bill 4012 to allow people who live in residential neighborhoods in Michigan cities the right to have a backyard farm from which they could sell farm products.

Amending the “Michigan zoning enabling act” would restore the right that many urban folks thought they enjoyed under Michigan’s Right to Farm Act. Recent regulatory changes have removed the legal protection for people who thought they had an inherent right to raise food for themselves and their families and sell any excess for extra money.

Read the bill here…

Young generation finds future in agriculture

January 9, 2015 • Leave a Comment

NPR:

America’s heartland is graying. The average age of a farmer in the U.S. is 58.3 — and that number has been steadily ticking upward for more than 30 years.

Overall, fewer young people are choosing a life on the land. But in some places around the country, like Maine, that trend is reversing. Small agriculture may be getting big again — and there’s new crop of farmers to thank for it.

On a windy hillside just a few miles from Maine’s rocky mid-coast, it’s 10 degrees; snow is crunching underfoot. Hairy highland cattle munch on flakes of hay and native Katahdin sheep are mustered in a white pool just outside the fence. Not far away, heritage chickens scuttle about a mobile poultry house that looks a bit like a Conestoga wagon.

Marya Gelvosa, majored in English literature and has never lived out in the country before. “Just a few years ago, if you’d told me that I was going to be a farmer, I would have probably laughed at you,” she says.

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Archive for the agriculture tag